


No Notion of Loving By Halves

by Darkmagyk



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Jane Austen Fusion, Alternate Universe - Regency, F/M, but not really, but sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-09
Updated: 2018-02-09
Packaged: 2019-03-15 23:33:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13623813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Darkmagyk/pseuds/Darkmagyk
Summary: The Stark cousin, Jon, goes home to discuss matters concerning the entail on Winterfell.In which Jon is a really good guy, and I flagrantly disregard how entails actually work.





	No Notion of Loving By Halves

**Author's Note:**

> This is not even sort of how entails, or primogeniture, or bastardy and regency English estate law worked.
> 
> Title from Northanger Abby "I have no notion of loving people by halves, it is not my nature." The context is totally different, but I love the notion of the quote on its own.

Sansa wondered if Jon was going to get whiplash.

Last time he was here, just after Robb’s death, Mother had offered him nothing but contempt.

This time, she’d showed him all the courtesy of a great visiting Lord.

That itself a contrast from the sweet intimacies of childhood, when he had been a beloved nephew, a proper member of the family.

He was shown into one of the sitting rooms now, and greeted not at all as if he’d once played hide and seek with his cousins behind these very couches.

While Mother fawned through unnecessary introductions, Sansa tried to offer him a comforting smile.

He’d taken to wearing black since he left the army. She’d thought, when he’d first shown up, after Robb’s death, that he had simply decided to be in mourning for 3 months, as for a brother, instead of 3 weeks the was expected of a partially close cousin. But clearly it was beyond that. She’d wondered when they had spent all that time together in town last season, if it was a nod to the King and his family, and their penchant for black and red. Now though, perhaps he was still in mourning, even nearly two years later.

Regardless, he looked well. He’d finally abandoned the beard he’d grown in his army days like she’d spent months advising, and the black set off his features nicely. His suit was cut impeccable and well in fashion based on Aunt Lysa’s recent letters from town.

He looked every bit the son of the King.

But with the same brown hair and deep grey eyes, he looked every bit the child of Winterfell, too.

“How’s Bran,” Jon finally asked, when Mother took a long enough break for him to get a polite word in.

She looked momentarily startled. Like she’d managed to forget that Jon was not some distant relation from far away, but someone who she has known since he was a boy. Who’s scrapes she’d kissed and accomplishments she had praised next to her own son’s.

“He’s better,” Sansa said when Mother took a few moments too long to respond. “He can sit up and hold short conversations now, but the doctors don’t want him leaving bed.”

Jon’s response was cut off by Arya’s entrance. Mother had been furious when she’s seen her come in from the gardens to meet Jon. Six and ten but with mud on not just her petticoats but her knees and elbows as well, like some sort of Wintertown ruffian child.

Arya had been sent to clean and change, Mordane being sent after her, with demands that she put in the purple silk morning dress and have her hair done just right.

It had sort of worked. Arya was in the dress, but she still has boots on, as opposed to the slippers Sansa’s sure mother would have preferred, and her brown hair was already falling down from it’s braid because of her running through Winterfell’s halls in a rush to see Jon.

She didn’t even bother to curtsey to Jon when he stood up to greet her, she merely threw herself at him.

Mamma looked like she might pitch a right fit, but Jon just catches Arya, and twirls her once in his strong arms like he had when she was a little girl. Both of them laughing.

It's the first time Sansa’s seen Jon laugh since Robb died.

The entire thing settled Mother.

Arya doesn’t know what she’s doing. But Sansa does.

It, like so many things as of late, has to do with the entail.

Grandfather had had the good sense to get the entail adjusted before he died. But he’d must have been a suspicious man, because he only managed adjust it for one generation, his children.

The terms were clear at the time. Uncle Brandon and his sons, and then Papa and his, and then Uncle Benjen’s and his, and then Aunt Lyanna and her sons could inherit it.

Uncle Brandon had died and Uncle Benjen had chosen the life of an army bachelor.

But Father and Mother had managed three strong sons, so it shouldn’t have mattered anyway.

Until the fever took Rickon and the war took Robb, and...questionable events took some of Bran.

Her middle brother would live for now, of course, but doctors and mothers worried, and they were sure he could never have children.

It fell to Jon.

Father loved Jon and Aunt Lyanna too much to resent him for it. Father blamed himself for letting his heir join the army, and he couldn’t blame Jon for the fact that his sister’s son can somehow inherit what his own daughters are barred from, but Mamma...

She had been furious the last time Jon have come around to stay a few months after Robb had died.

“He must already look on it as his own.” She’d snapped once when he’d been out in Wintertown, “Must be telling his whore of the week how she’ll be the mistress of Winterfell one day soon.”

The row Mother and Father had had at those words was far and away the worst Sansa had ever seen. They all needed an outlet for their grief. 

But Mamma seemed to have put all such worried behind her. She had a new way of securing a future for the Starks.

And it involved Jon FitzDragon and Arya Stark, and lots of brown haired, grey eyed sons.

For this purpose, she scrubbed up Jon’s favorite girl cousin, and tried to get her in the guise of a proper duke’s daughter, a real lady as befit the king’s (bastard) son.

It was an admirable effort, and Sansa could already see it was not going to work.

Sansa had seen Jon with the pretty Miss Val during her season last year, before the women went off with someone from the far reaches of Scotland, and that smile he gave Arya was not the kind he gave a woman he had any sort of designs on.

He used to call Arya little sister. Given the way he ruffled her well-done hair, it did not seem as though that had changed.

Mother would have to come up with a new scheme, it seemed. It wasn’t like the situation was hopeless. Both their dowries were immense. Their connections impeccable. Their name older than the King’s. Riverrun was always open, and, of course, Jon would never turn them out if they had nothing else. He was far far too good for that, even if he did not make Arya Stark a Marchioness. Sansa was sure to be the wife an earl, at the very least. Arya might ran away with a blacksmith. So they would all be well taken care of when father passed. 

“Who was the man you travelled with?” Arya asked, she plotted down on the seat next to mother, across from where Sansa and Jon were sitting “Mycha said you rode in with someone to Wintertown.”

Mother looked ready to scold her daughter for such invasions of privacy or perhaps for running around with Wintertown boys unobserved, but then considers the actual words.

“You know any friend of yours would be welcome here,” She said, because that is true, “Ned, that is, Lord Stark, would insist upon it, and so do I.”

Jon shook his head, “Thank you, Lady Stark.” Sansa never heard Sweetrobin call her mother as such, but it seems after last time, Jon decided to take the most formal route with his aunt. “But he’d much prefer to stay in Wintertown, and frankly I’d prefer for him to be there.”

Arya snorted and ignored Mother’s glare.

“He’s not my friend as such, he’s my solicitor. Tyrion Lannister. I don’t know if you are acquainted. Old name, rich, noble, the works. He’s not just a Lannister; he’s the Duke of Casterly’s younger son.” Sansa knew of them. His sister must have been the once notorious beauty Lady Cersei, whose terrible son had been eager to make Sansa’s acquaintance during a trip to the West half a year ago. “Terrible family.” Jon commented, after seeing they recognized it, “I like Tyrion the best. But that’s not saying much.”

Arya burst out laughing at that.

Mother looked at a loss for what to do about it.

As far as Sansa understood, this was merely a social visit. A reconnection to Winterfell, after the tragedy of Robb. Though he was as fond of this area as Father was, so perhaps he sought to make some sort of business venture while here. Sansa liked matters such as that, and if she brought it up correctly, she could ask whatever questions she pleased and Mother could not say a thing about impropriety, especially with Arya right there. So Sansa, a lady at three, and chief society daughter, took up her calling, “Why did you bring your solicitor?”

“He’s the best at estate sort of things,” Jon said, “I promised Uncle Ned I’d bring him along, to help us and Mr. Luwin get this entail nonsense well and truly dismissed.”

“What?” This brought even Arya up short.

“Lord Tyrion and Mr. Luwin have been exchanging letters. If all goes well, we’ll have the paperwork to break the entail done up in a fortnight and ready to be approved by the courts and then all of this ridiculousness can be put behind us.” he shook his head ruefully “I continue to have on idea what Grandfather was thinking, only modifying it for one generation. We shall not make the mistake again.”

“You mean to break the entail?” Mother asked, after all three ladies had several long moments to really think on what Jon had said.

“Of course.” Jon’s dark eyebrows knit together in confusion. “Why wouldn’t we.”

“Because you’re the heir to Winterfell, with it.” Arya said, because she had never seen a reason not to be blunt, least of all with Jon, “If you break it, you’ll go behind us.”

“You and father would both have to agree to it.” Sansa said, quietly, almost to herself, though her family was all close enough to hear it.

There was nothing Father had to compel Jon’s compliance. Father had paid for Jon’s school and time at Cambridge, and then his army commission, had given him an income to supplement the one his father sometime remembered to provide, so the young man could make his way, even around his army career. But after he’d been hailed a hero, the King had suddenly taken an interest in his younger, illegitimate son. And Jon found himself a Maquess, with an estate all his own. And all that had happened _before_ Robb had died and Jon became heir presumptive to the Dukedom of Winterfell.

Father could offer nothing Jon did not already have, to get him to agree to such a thing.

What could Jon possibly gain. Mother might hold Jon’s place against him, but Father and Arya and Sansa could never feel such things for their most beloved relative. His position in the family could not be improved upon through this or any other action.

Jon took in all of their faces, his confusion morphing into a frown, “I’ve been talking to Lord Tyrion about this since the doctors made their initial diagnosis about Bran.” That had been just after Robb’s death. “I’ve only just gotten Uncle Ned to agree.”

Mother and Arya were both speechless, nearly identical looks of wide-eyed shock on their faces. That a man, even one such as Jon, would give up one of the oldest seats in the country to his female cousins was went well beyond anything in imagination. There was letting his relatives stay in his house. There was providing them an income and even their existing station in the household. Above and beyond, and something she’d never have doubted of him.

But then there was this.

He’d grown up here as surely as they had. Loved it as much as any of them, perhaps even more than Sansa had as a child, always eager that she was for life in Town.

“You could be Lord Stark.” Sansa voiced what they must have all been thinking. They all knew he wanted to be a Stark, had always wanted it, even as he bore the king’s son's name. He could be Jon FitzDragon, 23rd Duke of Stark. “You could be Lord of Winterfell.”

Jon reached out and took her hand, and a pleasant shiver ran down her spine. His deep eyes met her’s. “Winterfell belongs to you, Sansa.”

He gave her a smile she recognized, but not from their childhood together.

Perhaps there would be grey-eyed sons after all.

**Author's Note:**

> This came out of my desire to write a Jonsa Pride and Prejudice AU, and the twin realization that in a P&P AU Jon is DEFIANTLY Mr. Collins, and the Starks make literally no since as the Bennets.
> 
> Jon's surname might change, because I'm still not sure if I really like FitzDragon, but I don't think I like any of the other options anymore.


End file.
